How Linda and I Grow Spiritually

In the early 1970s I taught guitar at Nielsen's Music Studio in Rockford, Illinois. The store was owned by Ralph Nielsen. His son was Rick Nielsen, who eventually gained fame in the band Cheap Trick. 

Nielsen's was an amped-up environment. A lot of really good musicians taught there. It was an inspirational  guitarist gathering place. Rick was the best of all.

I began finger-picking at age five, on the steel guitar, with my teacher, the legendary Kay Koster. I taught finger style technique - three and four-finger picking patterns, plus acoustic strumming technique. 

I had students who were committed to practicing and learning. This made my time as a teacher enjoyable.

I taught the way I learned to flat pick and finger pick. If they chose not to follow my instruction, then I am not their teacher. 

There are similarities between guitar mentoring and spiritual coaching and counseling. When someone comes to me for spiritual growth, I show them how I have done this. Then, I expect them to do the same.

When I became a follower of Jesus forty-nine years ago I was an undergraduate at Northern Illinois University. I began to attend a campus ministry. I was asked if I wanted to be in a Small Group for Bible study and prayer. I was told this experience would be one of the keys to my spiritual vitality and growth.

That proved true. I've been in a Small Group all forty-nine years of my Christian life. Linda and I have been in a Small Group Community all forty-six years of our marriage.

The early Jesus-followers met in small groups; in homes, in upper rooms, wherever they could find a gathering place. Small Group Community was essential to the explosive spiritual and numerical growth of the early church. It's also essential to our spiritual life and growth.

Linda and I were taught that we needed to meet with the larger community. We learned Hebrews 10:25, which reads (Passion Translation):

This is not the time to pull away 

and neglect meeting together, 

as some have formed the habit of doing, 

because we need each other! 

In fact, 

we should come together even more frequently, 

eager to encourage and urge each other onward 

as we anticipate that day dawning.

Linda and I have taken this verse to heart. It is our practice, essential to our spiritual well-being. We have never missed gathering with the Jesus-community on Sunday mornings. We never participated in secular, Sunday activities for our kids. We need the body and the body needs us. This is about a Movement, not another activity.

And, we have learned the importance of meeting alone with God, to pray. I have written about this in my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

The rhythm of our spiritual lives looks like this:

We meet alone with God. 

We spend time with God in "the secret place." 

This is the Very Small Group (VSG) - God and I.

We meet weekly in a Home Group 

to study scripture and pray together. 

This is the Small Group (SG) - 6-12 people.

We meet Sunday mornings to worship and listen to the preached Word on Sunday mornings and other times.

This is the Large Group (LG). 

Linda and I grow spiritually by doing these. We counsel others to do the same. If someone comes to us for spiritual help but does not do the same, then we cannot help them.

(The never-ending wheel of spiritual growth.)

DISCIPLESHIP: PART 2 - THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST (Sermon)

(Redeemer)

Is it possible to have Jesus as Savior, but not as Lord? I give my answer in my January 19 sermon. You can listen to it HERE.

When Is a Church Not an Actual Church?

Cardinals and a snowy window

Francis Chan knows it is possible for a church to not be a church. The name "church" doesn't mean it is what it says. In Chan's book Letters to the Church he writes, 

"If Muslims were advertising free doughnuts and a raffle for a free iPad as a means to get people to their events, I would find that ridiculous. It would be proof to me that their god does not answer prayer. 

If they needed rock concerts and funny speakers to draw crowds, I would see them as desperate and their god as cheap and weak. 

Understand that I am not judging any church that works hard at getting people through the doors with good motives. I spent years doing the same thing, and I believe my heart was sincere. I wanted people to hear the gospel by any means possible. Praise God for people who have a heart for truth! 
I’m just asking you to consider how this looks to a watching world. 

While our good intentions may have gotten some people in the door, they also may have caused a whole generation to have a lower view of our God. 

It is hard for the average person to reconcile why a group of people supposedly filled with God’s Spirit, able to speak with the Creator of the universe, would need gimmicks.

(Chan, Letters to the Church, pp. 95-96)

Then Chan asks, rhetorically:  

"Is there ever a point when a church is no longer a church?...  Just because you walk into a building with the word Church painted on a sign doesn’t mean God sees it as an actual church." (Ib., 96)

***
My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Disciples Have Access to an Open Heaven (Sermon)

(Redeemer)

My sermon on "Open Heaven" can be listened to HERE.

Pseudo-Independence As a Sign of Depression

I've seen the following several times: X ends their marriage and declares to the virtual world "I am now free!" X's cyber twins applaud the announcement of X's Independence Day. X celebrates this for some days, responding to the congratulations.

I saw another one of these rituals recently. Why did I doubt, in this recent case, that X was really "free?" [I counseled X many years ago.]

Brown University medical psychiatrist Peter Kramer writes that, "To act from independence is one thing, from compulsion, another." (Peter Kramer, Against Depression, 91) The difference between the two is the difference between free will and the determinism that mental illness imposes.

What often seems like an act of independence out of one's free will is actually the polar opposite (or a variation thereof); viz., of bondage. That's what I thought about X. Was X really not free, and just responding to an unsatisfied urge to placate their depression?

Thomas Merton once wrote that anyone who smokes a cigarette every time they feel the urge to do so is not free, but enslaved. The person who has sexual intercourse every time they feel the urge to do so is not free, but in bondage to their urges. As I write this I am desiring a bowl of ice cream. Should I leave the keyboard, and hustle to the freezer, am I free?

One sign of freedom is the ability to choose against one's urges or feelings. In such cases one is not psychologically, or clinically, compelled. 

Kramer tells the story of a woman named "Mariana" who appears, to her suitor "Harry," to march to the beat of her own drum. Kramer writes: "Often, these traits signal independence. They indicate confidence...  [But] In this instance, I thought, the identical behaviors signal illness."

It's hard to judge between the two. How many times, in ministry, have I been fooled?! Yet I have seen the real thing.

Usually, my clarity about X's freedom comes after months and years of changed behaviors. I don't spend a lot of time trying to judge whether the person is free or not, but over the years a number of misjudgments cause me to be more cautious. The person who on a Sunday morning declares their freedom is, at times, exhibiting a knee-jerk reflex.

People who shout about their "freedom" from sexual promiscuity while being oblivious to their bondage. Conversely, people announce their liberation from sexual fidelity. Their friends misread the social cues as signs of an independent person, which is like looking at water and pronouncing it wine. 

Kramer writes: "The social response to depression gives rise to paradox and oxymoron" (93). The depressed,  psychologically determined person, in their self-proclaimed freedom, appears liberated.

This is pseudo-independent behavior, false freedom. Kramer says it is often a signal of depression.

***
I write about prayer as God-dependency in my book

 - Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God. 

Killing More Babies in the New York Times

(Trees in my backyard)

To Ylanda Gault, having an abortion is the emotional equivalent of having dimples, or having a mole on one side of her face. So she says in today's New York Times, in "I'll Never Be Ashamed of My Abortion." 

This upsets me. It trivializes those of us who believe abortion is the taking of an innocent person's life.

The reason I am saddened by articles like this is because I believe the inborn life is a person. Now note this. If the inborn life is a person, then abortion is killing a person. If the inborn life is not a person, we kill non-persons all the time. The real issue is over the status of the inborn life, irregardless of their developmental level.

Here is how Gault's article reads to me, as I substitute "kill my baby" for her euphemistic freedom-to-abort words.

• I'll never be ashamed of killing my baby.
• Like so many women of reproductive age, I've killed my baby.
• I, and I alone, made the decision to kill my baby more than a decade ago so that I could be the best mother I could be to the two children I already had.
• Roe v Wade guaranteed a woman's freedom to kill her baby.
• Despite what some politicians would have us believe, most Americans support that right to kill their babies.
• We must not allow some warped, anti-feminist ideology to take away our freedom to kill our babies.
• What’s most important is that we stand together and stand up against the beat-down on sexual and reproductive health (the right to kill our babies) in this country.
• If our constitutional right to safe, legal baby-killing is not upheld, more than 25 million Americans of reproductive age could lose the freedom to decide if and when to kill their babies. 
• What I took for granted — the freedom to kill their babies  — is a right my daughters and their daughters may well be denied.
• This is not complicated or political. When you have bodily autonomy and the freedom to kill your babies, you are able to thrive.
• Nearly 15 years after killing my baby, I am at peace. I now have three children, ages 12 to 20. The most important gift I can give them is the best me I can be. My daughters and my son know I killed their sibling just as they know I have a mole on one side of my face, and dimples.
• Research shows the most common post-baby-killing  feeling is relief. Ninety-five percent of us do not regret killing our inborn children. 

Gault says she is not ashamed of killing her baby. For the many who believe abortion is taking an innocent human life, we are both ashamed and grief-stricken.

***

See also:

Against Abortion: A Logical Argument

Against Abortion: More from Francis Beckwith

"Viability" Is Irrelevant to Personhood (and Abortion)

Elective Abortion has Nothing to Do with Reproductive Health Care 

A March of Euphemisms in Our Orwellian World (On Abortion)

Elective Abortion has Nothing to Do with Reproductive Health Care

(Bolles Harbor, Monroe)

(I'm keeping this ball in play.)

Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, 

as though by instinct, 

at the threshold of any dangerous thought. 

It includes the power of not grasping analogies, 

of failing to perceive logical errors, 

of misunderstanding the simplest arguments 

if they are inimical to *Ingsoc, 

and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought 

which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. 

Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

George Orwell

1984

P. 132

For example:

Abortion is Reproductive Health. 

Princeton jurisprudential professor Robert P. George, in Conscience and Its Enemies, argues that abortion has nothing to do with "reproductive health." So, the recently-passed (and joyously worshiped) Reproductive Health Act, in an Orwellian move, is misnamed and, as such, misleading.

George writes:

"The question at issue in abortion is not “reproductive health” or health of any kind, precisely because direct abortions are not procedures designed to make sick people healthy or to protect them against disease or injury. Again, pregnancy is not a disease. The goal of direct abortions is to cause the death of a child because a woman believes that her life will be better without the child’s existing than it would be with the child’s existing. In itself, a direct (or elective) abortion—deliberately bringing about the death of a child in utero—does nothing to advance maternal health (though sometimes the death of the child is an unavoidable side effect of a procedure, such as the removal of a cancerous womb, that is designed to combat a grave threat to the mother’s health). That’s why it is wrong to depict elective abortion as health care." (Kindle Location 2777; emphasis mine)

Elsewhere George writes:

“A huge irony: The NY law authorizing the killing of babies in the third trimester PROVES that the aim of the abortion lobby is NOT the protection of maternal health in circumstances of hazardous pregnancy, but is rather the right to destroy an unwanted child whose existence poses no risk to maternal health (in any sense of the term ‘health’ that amounts to anything other than a rationalization for killing unwanted babies). The only reason to kill rather than deliver a child in the third trimester of pregnancy and gestation is that the woman (or someone who is pressuring her to abort) wants the child to be dead rather than alive. It's the child's *existence*, not the pregnancy, which poses the alleged, ‘health’ risk. The pregnancy can be ended (‘terminated’) by delivering the baby alive, rather than killing him or her. So do you see the see the sophistry in the argument for abortion here? It's glaring.”

In other words, if the mother's health is at risk, and the third-trimester child is **"viable" outside the womb, why not deliver the child rather than kill it? 

Because...   this baby is unwanted.

_____

* "Ingsoc" - The English Socialist Party, better known as Ingsoc, is the fictional political party of the totalitarian government of Oceania in Orwell's 1984.

** I see no good reason to accept "viability" as the tipping point for determining human value. "Viability" is another example of Orwellian "newspeak," meeting the ideological requirements of a secular political culture.

Overcoming Self-rejection

The River Raisin, Monroe County, MI

Henri Nouwen writes: "The great obstacle which prevents the Spirit working in us is self-rejection. The greatest obstacle to the Spirit working in us is that we say to ourselves that we are useless, we are nothing." (The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life, 78)

Conversely, the open door to the Spirit's working in us is the heart-knowledge that we are deeply loved and accepted, by grace, by God. 

Jesus told his disciples that, after his death, the Father would come and make his home in their hearts. When we know we are loved by God, and that God loves us in spite of the condition of our hearts, we welcome the homecoming of God. We are "something" in the eyes of God, so much so that the Spirit desires to take up residence within us.

Self-rejection resists the Spirit of God residing in us because we feel undeserving. I have met Christians who insist that God is angry with them, and wants nothing to do with them. That is a denial of the grace of God, and shuts the door to experiencing the love and power of God.

Nouwen writes:

"Once I know I am the Beloved, once I start discovering that in me, then the Spirit can work in me and in others; then we can do wonderful things. Now, once I say, "No, God doesn't love me, I am not as good as everyone else," somehow I do not claim the truth that Jesus came to proclaim." (Ib.)

Embracing God's love for you is the antidote to a spirit of self-rejection.

***
My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

First Sermon on DISCIPLESHIP (audio)

(Lake Michigan sand dunes)

Here is the first of my three sermons on DISCIPLESHIP. 

The Real Source of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Social Activism

(With one of my Payne Theological Seminary classes)

In George Orwell's book 1984 the main character, Winston Smith, has the job of eliminating politically unwanted ideas, documents, and words, by throwing them down a "memory hole." To rewrite history is to forget history. To do this is "Orwellian."

Sadly, we will see Orwellian unthinking in today's celebration of Dr. King's birthday. The true sources of his social activism, which were spiritual, are largely forgotten.

As our nation pauses to honor Dr. King, we celebrate his great civil and political influence. But we will hear little of his own understanding of the source of that influence.

The fire burning deep in King’s soul was his relationship with God, fanned by his constant prayer life. Few scholars have attended to this, says King scholar Lewis Baldwin of Vanderbilt University, in his book Never to Leave Us Alone: The Prayer Life of Martin Luther King. Our secular media has thrown King's spiritual life down the Orwellian memory hole. 

I remember reading, for the first time, King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” I knew King was a Christian, but his spiritual life was never talked about in the media. We saw film and photos of King praying in the city streets, but were not told how much this meant to him. His “Letter” greatly moved me.

I saw that King was an intellectual, a brilliant writer, and most importantly, a fundamentally spiritual being. The social activism of Martin Luther King, Jr., was a function of a life grounded in God and prayer, which he defined as “conversing with God.”

Prayer was more than a theory or some religious thing for King. King had an actual praying life. He saw praying as necessary for changing his own life and the prevailing culture. King never separated moral responsibility from a deep personal spirituality and piety. Prayer, for King, was conversation with God.

Once King received a phone call at midnight from a racist who called him a “n-------,” threatened to kill him, and “blow up” his home This deeply disturbed him. He discovered that all the intellectual things he learned in the university and seminary could not help him overcome this. 

King turned to God in prayer, and had a face-to-face encounter with what was, in the tradition of his forebears, called a “Waymaker.” This God-encounter exposed his fears, insecurities, and vulnerablities. He found comfort as an “inner voice” spoke to him, reminding him that he was not alone, commanding him to stand up for righteousness, justice, and truth, and assuring him that “lo, I will be with you, even to the end of the world.”

It is important to understand King’s position on spiritual things if we want to grasp his societal accomplishments. King, who earned a PhD at Boston University, knew that intellectual accomplishments were not enough to transform self and society. God was needed, and prayer was able to “invoke the supernatural.” Baldwin writes that “King taught the people of Montgomery that the weapon of prayer was ultimately more powerful and effective than any gun or bomb.”

King told students that, if you don’t have a deep life of prayer, you have no business preaching to others. King saw himself as essentially involved in a spiritual movement, not simply a secular struggle for equal rights, social justice, and peace.

“King,” writes Baldwin, “was effective because his praying and preaching were effective. True leadership in his case made prayer and preaching indispensable.”

King knew, existentially, that real, true prayer involves “a profound surrender of the self to God, not prayer rooted in self-pride, self-righteousness, and self-centeredness.” That becomes the kind of relationship with God that can transform the fabric of reality.

The real source of King’s influence was his soul-receptivity to the powerful, transforming influence of God. 

Rev. John Piippo, PhD

Senior Pastor, Redeemer Fellowship Church

Monroe, MI

Author, Praying: Reflections on 40 Years ofSolitary Conversations with God

Adjunct Professor, Payne Theological Seminary (African Methodist Episcopal)

734-731-1709

johnpiippo@msn.com 

A New Discipleship Movement in the Church?

(Back of street sign, in Ann Arbor.)

Tired of the Entertainment Church?

Tired of the Consumer Church?

Both are geared to keep the people happy and coming back, so as to maintain the infrastructure.

Many young followers of Jesus may be tiring of this. That's good!

Joseph Mattera, writing in Charisma Magazine, believes things may be changing in 2020. Wouldn't this be hopeful? Mattera writes:

"The crowd-based CEO model of church continues to disillusion young people looking for true community, authenticity and a people to call family. Those viewing the profound discipleship movement that is christianizing nations like China and Iran (without big buildings, budgets, social media marketing, paid staff and worship teams) are longing for the same kind of biblical pattern in Western churches.

I believe 2020 is the year when more and more leaders will attempt to build "disciple making movements" rather than mere convert-based churches. The corporate business model of doing church—which took off in the 1980s—has proven that, irrespective of the crowds they garner, they usually fail at disciple making. Jesus proved that focusing on disciple making was the key to building the largest and most effective movement the world has ever seen!

This will be the year when disciple making will gain the traction needed to eventually challenge the assumptions of the "CEO convert driven" model of church."

Character, not Appearance, Is What Matters

Character comes before ability and reputation. Especially in the Church. 

Ability without character is morally and spiritually toxic. 

Unfortunately, some, in order to maintain appearances, elevate people to leadership, or their worship teams, while bypassing Christlikeness. 

Put another way, being always comes before doing. Who a person is is not to be measured by what a person does. Much in American culture, and the culture-formed Church, has this backwards.

In our post-Christian culture, virtues such as living in holiness and righteousness are not cool. Instead of who we truly are (our character), we are left with how we appear to others. For many it is appearance, not reality, that counts. Just watch TV commercials and behold the vanity.

Reputations are fabricated on social media. Because everyone still needs to be loved and liked, as well as get hired, one's image is re-formed in terms of one's liked-ness. (Do you like "me" when you see "me?")

In post-Christianity people live by the old hedonistic code, "if it feels good, do it." Unfortunately, this ends up tarnishing one's precious reputation.

If you have the money, even though your character cannot be changed (because you are commanded to "accept who you are"), your sickly reputation can be erased, or at least hidden. Online reputation repair is available, so that who you really are will not be seen (because who you really are is unacceptable to others and, therefore, to you). This is not about how you want to be seen, but how others want to see you. Whatever that is (it constantly changes), you can pay to have yourself look better.

Here are some quotes from reputation repair specialists.

"We can make you look great on the internet." (here)

"Look great when people search your name." (here)

"To be successful, Google needs to approve of you." (here)

"Our experts will fix negative Google results so you look great online." (here)

How much money will you need to do this? Remember, because the surface of you is so miserably unappealing, a whole lot of ongoing, monthly, expertise and time management will be needed. You are a sorry case, and will have to pay for damage control.

So,

"how much does online reputation management cost? It depends. It could range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars every month. How much does online reputation really cost? It could cost you your reputation." (See here.)

I think I'll save the money and focus on my character. It is flawed. I need more inner transformation. Rather than hide it, I'll confess it to my Christian brothers and sisters who love me and pray for me, and who have also not fully arrived. Confession and forgiveness of sins is not reputation repair, but community character development.

For some inspiration on the subject of character, see David Brooks, The Road to Character, where you will meet real people who could care less about their reputations.

See also The Character Gap.


***
My two books are

 Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

God Is Sending Kindness to War Against the Outrage

(Me and Joe LaRoy in Bangkok)

A wave of the Father's love is rolling over my church family. In a recent praying time God told me this would happen. Now, it has begun.

As a result, I am studying love, again. The greatest words ever written on love are found in 1 Corinthians 13. There may be no better book to read on 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 than Lewis Smedes' Love Within Limits: A Realist's View of 1 Corinthians 13.

Chapter 2 is "Love is Kind." A wave of kindness is enveloping my church family. This is good for me, since in our age of outrage I need to grow the fruit of kindness.

"Kindness," writes Smedes, "is the will to save; it is God's awesome power channeled into gentle healing. Kindness is love acting on persons." (11)

Love is power. Love is gentle. 

One quality of love is kindness. Harshness, on the other hand, is sin.

Kindness is power. Kindness moves people. The Word says, Speak the truth in love. 

God is sending his kindness to combat the outrage. "Kindness," says Smedes, "is enormous strength - more than most of us have, except now and then." (Ib.)

"Kindness is the power that moves us to support and heal someone who offers nothing in return. Kindness is the power to move a self-centered ego toward the weak, the ugly, the hurt, and to move that ego to invest itself in personal care with no expectation of reward." (Ib.)

Only a free person can love in such a powerful way. Waves of the Father's love set people free.

When I ask God to "set me free," I am thinking of this kind of thing; viz., freedom to love; freedom to be kind.

To war against outrageous behavior with outrageous behavior only elicits more outrageous behavior. 

**
My three books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

After a break I'll continue writing Transformation: How God Changes the Human Heart.

Then: Technology and Spiritual Formation.

Then, the Lord willing, Linda and I will write our book on Relationships.

A Letter to Christians About Gentleness and Respect

Ancient war helmets, Detroit Institute of Art
Looks like someone took a spear in the forehead.

(I'm re-posting this for some friends. Some Christians - maybe many - have this edge to them, a judgmental harshness, which is not from God.)

This is for followers of Jesus. Because I see this happening everywhere, to include, sadly, in the Church. It speaks to me  as well. Perhaps I am writing this for my own instruction? To remind myself of The Standard? If so, I can accept that. 

I agree with Dallas Willard, who once confessed that he had not loved others enough. Me either.

When you feel anger, be gentle and kind. That's the fruit the Holy Spirit produces. Harshness and unkindness is sin. In your anger, do not sin. 

Here's an example.

I embrace the traditional definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. Other revisionist definitions are,  therefore, wrong. Some people feel anger towards me because of what I affirm. What shall I do? How shall I respond?

How I talk about what I affirm is important. In Romans 12 we are told to not conform our hearts to the pattern of our culture. God's kingdom, as Jesus repeatedly demonstrated, is not of this world.

One of this world's patterns has always been harshness and disrespect. Especially when it comes to disagreement. Much of this is seen on social media. It gets unloving and hate-filled. And anti-Christlike. Followers of Jesus who descend into the ugly side of social media are conforming to the world's modus operandi.

The Jesus way, on the other hand, includes beliefs and attitudes such as...

Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.

All the awesome spiritual gifts are nothing if you don't have love, as a heart attitude that leads to behavior.

Love is the greatest thing. Therefore, if you are on social media, be great.

Express your reasons for the hope you have, but always do it in gentleness and with respect.

Avoid the argumentative person. (Proverbs)

Speak the truth? Yes! But always in love!

If it has flesh and blood, it is not our real enemy. (Do not be sucked in by social media about this. On social media we see people fighting against people.)

When disagreeing, be patient with others, as you work to listen and understand them. (1 Cor. 13)

In disagreement, never dishonor others.  (1 Cor. 13)

Remove your anger buttons. (1 Cor. 13)

Grow up spiritually, and put the ways of children behind you. (1 Cor. 13:11)

When in conflict and disagreement, see HERE for how to be both truthful and loving. 

Remember that, contrary to much media, to disagree is not to hate.

If, when dialoguing and disagreeing, you fall into hatred, dishonor, and diminishment of the other, repent, and ask them for forgiveness.  

The superior conflict-discussing, understanding-and-forgiving environment is face-to-face. Phone conversation comes in second. Email and texting is a distant, inferior third. The worst way, the incendiary way, is on social media, for the world to see. True, that's more interesting and attention-getting. Which is part of our world's disease.

See In Essentials Unity, in Nonessentials Liberty, and in All Things, Love. Read, again, 1 Corinthians 13. Apply.

(Maybe...   one more suggestion...  take some philosophy classes. In my experience these classes had much debate and disagreement, but done civilly. Because, in logic, ad hominem abusives are irrelevant to truth-seeking.)

**
My three books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

After a break I'll continue writing Transformation: How God Changes the Human Heart.

Then: Technology and Spiritual Formation.

Then, the Lord willing, Linda and I will write our book on Relationships.